


Your Operating System Is The Wrong Arthropod

by coldhope



Series: discstuck drabbles [2]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Homestuck
Genre: Gen, This Is STUPID, YOSPOS, anthill inside vs. silicomb, but kind of hilarious all the same, discstuck crossover ficlets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:59:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ponder and Sollux talk computers; Eridan is bored. But observant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Operating System Is The Wrong Arthropod

**Author's Note:**

> Because I can't frickin stop now apparently.

“You’re using _antth_?”

Sollux stares. He and the human are built rather similarly, too-thin angles and awkward intensity. You personally could not give two and a half dribbling shits about whatever this contraption is or how it works, but apparently Appleberry Blast is just pailing himself over their network of glass tubing full of scurrying insects. 

“That’s right, they communicate with one another using pheromones--”

“I know, of courthe they do but I never thought of bathing an information tranthferenthe network on antth. Beeth make tho much more thenthe.”

“Bees,” the human repeats. “You don’t by any chance have a...a...hive diagram on you?”

“No, but look, itth thimple. Input ith prothethed by a bathic thilicomb matricth and individual packetth get thtacked here in the combrackth...” He’s scribbling on the notebook the human hastily hands him, some kind of totally fuckin impossible-to-follow hieratic of symbols and numbers, but whatsisname, Stibbons, seems to be on the exact same page. 

“Which, okay, don’t get me wrong but thith ith lightyearth ahead of your anthill-inthide thythtem but on the other hand you guyth theem to be thtuck in like the Dark Ageth in all other rethpecth tho I gueth it’th pretty fucking amazing you have computer technology at all. Whatth the build hithtory on thith thing?”

Stibbons straightens up and takes hold of his robe’s lapels and begins to hold forth. You haven’t seen Captor so fascinated by something in ages now, not that you spend a great deal of time lookin’ at him in the first place, goddamn geek with his goddamn lithp and his goddamn ability to blow up husktops remotely with his fuckin viruses. Not your favorite troll. 

Still, it’s kinda interesting to watch him unfold. He does it gradually, like one of those fucked-up hiveblock-decoration frondstems which closes up its frondlets if you poke them and only reluctantly unclenches when it senses danger’s gone. First the chilly fuck-you hunch of his shoulders goes, then the unconscious forward set of his horns, then the way he keeps himself firmly within this little enclosed space without any of the bits of him sticking out to get knocked; finally he’s almost draping, sitting beside Ponder Stibbons in front of the ant machine and excitedly doing whatever this fucked-up planet’s version of typing might be called. His long narrow fingers fly across the primitive keyboard. 

Despite yourself you saunter over to have a look at what they’re doing, and stare. A fuckin _quill pen_ , held in a weird array of clips and pulleys and chains, is jerkily writing something in their weird backwards script on a scroll of paper. You try to work out what’s controlling it but the idea that this vast anthill of glass can possibly be doing the work of a computer is way too crazy even for you to countenance, so you just look down your nose at it and think how much wizards don’t exist.

Even when you’re in a university full of the fuckers, they totally don’t exist. It’s all science.

“He’s going to go on like that all day,” says a fatalistic voice by your ear, and you jump and whirl around to find yourself faced with a...really shitty wizard, like on the level of your shitty-wand-piles. His wizarding robes are a fuckin disgrace, even by the standards of this planet, and his beard is frankly pathetic (although honestly you don’t get the whole beard aesthetic, you guess it has something to do with age and wisdom but you don’t think it would suit you even when you are fucking wrinkly as a desiccated-winemaking-fruit). And his hat says W I Z Z A R D on it. You have a feeling this is not a badge of honor.

“Who might you be?” you inquire.

“Rincewind,” says the WIZZARD, and you quirk an eyebrow at him. “And you’re the creatures from another world. You don’t look like I expected.”

“Terribly fuckin sorry to disappoint.”

“Don’t be, it’s narrative convention at this point. You look a bit like orcs but not really, orcs haven’t got those horns and the facial bone structure is quite different....I meant your friend, there, he’s going to need rescuing from Stibbons, I’m afraid. He’s made the cardinal error of asking questions about Hex.”

“Yeah, I noticed. If anything I think it’s your guy who’s gonna need rescuin’, seriously, Captor will talk the fuckin ear off a trunkbeast if you let him get started. Thtarted. He is crazy retarded for his computer bees and all this mind honey shit, I can’t even believe how much he apparently has in common with this dude.”

“They do seem to be getting on like a house that is not in any way in the midst of conflagration,” says Rincewind. “You’re not a computing enthusiast?”

“Worlds a no. I’m--”

The fuck are you, anyway? “I’m a seadweller. We don’t fuck around with electronic shit, doesn’t mix with the milieu. Also, just so you know, magic doesn’t exist. It’s all science.”

Rincewind groans. “You and Ponder _would_ get along.”

“Pff. White science is the thing. How come you guys don’t carry wands like proper wizards anyhow?”

“Wands? Wands are for conjurors. No, we use staffs. You....haven’t been here long enough to get all the amusing layers of meaning attached to the popular song _A Wizard’s Staff Has A Knob On The End_ , I imagine.”

“...I think I can somehow xenologically fuckin guess,” you say. “Look, Rincething, there anywhere in this godforsaken dump where a guy could get a cup of coffee that ain’t poorly disguised dishwater?”

You notice his hat has a couple of corks dangling from the brim. Jegus, this guy is a mess. Still, he’s actually talkin to you unlike most of his compatriots who either stare at you as if you have two heads or brandish their...staffs, okay, those big stick things they walk around with. Sollux looks like he’s going to be very happy where he is for as long as Stibbons can bear it (“tho itth all in beenary, look, you can probably work out thome kind of bathe-thix code jutht bathed on what you’ve already got here...”) and you turn back to Rincewind with a winning smirk and one eyebrow lifted. 

“This time of day they’re probably still picking at second breakfast,” he says, glancing upward. “There should be leftovers in the Hall if you’d like to explore.”

“That’s me. Eridan Ampora, intrepid fuckin explorer, or at least I will be when I have some goddamn coffee in me, this diurnal lifestyle shit is hard, Rincewind. You know that? --Captor, I’m out, gonna go be ambassadorial an’ shit, you behave yourself now, hear?”

Sollux doesn’t stop talking or look up from his whacked-out diagrams, just flips you off over his shoulder, and you grin. By your calculations you have maybe an hour or so before Kar completely flips his shit and comes to find you lest you’ve managed to start a war or something, so you and your new not-wizard-but-WIZZARD pal should hurry up and abscond. You gesture elegantly for him to precede you, and he gives you the weirdest fuckin look as if you are the most interestin’ thing to happen to this place in sweeps. Which of course you probably are.

“Lead on.”


End file.
